Watch replay: ESA astronaut André Kuipers working with students

24 April 2012

As part of the Take Your Classroom into Space initiative, ESA astronaut André Kuipers will talk from orbit today with over 1500 students in Germany, Spain, The Netherlands and the UK. A live webcast of the event will start at about 17:10 CEST (replay now available).

Hundreds of European school students are taking part in ESA’s Take Your Classroom into Space programme, in which they perform the same experiments in their classrooms as performed by André on the International Space Station.

Scroll to the end of the article for a replay link.

During today’s live call, students will have an opportunity to compare their results with André’s, testing their predictions and seeing the effects of microgravity first-hand.

The first experiment, EPO Convection, demonstrates on a small scale how thermal gradients drive convective currents and thus, on the large scale of a planet, how temperature gradients influence density-driven convection and create atmospheric and oceanic currents.

The second experiment, EPO Foam Stability, illustrates the physical properties of wet foams and how gravity influences stability, as well as how understanding foam formation and stability can help us make cutting-edge materials.

André will show students how a foam is created from pure water in microgravity, and observe its stability.